An Unspoken Covenant

Harmonious echoes of unknown chants and the images of shrouded strangers in ruins unseen stirred the weary adventurer out from his already hesitant sleep. In a cold sweat and with a racing heart he looked around him, unsure of the reality of the placid forest surrounding the campsite. A quick shot of his eyes towards the sky told him the time. About three hours past midnight, he guessed.

A glance to his left revealed his companion Jaera in her usual trance. He never understood how elves could be so at ease without any real sleep, but then again, he himself was no elf. If he was, then perhaps he would have some semblance of an idea as to what the people and thus, the remains he saw in his dreams meant. The ruins, from what he remembered, seemed akin to a temple of sorts, but where they were and what they meant to him was beyond his mind to comprehend.

A clue came to him in the form of echoed whispers, ones which he thought he had imagined, that his dreams had conjured. With the voices also returned the visions as if something or someone was attempting to reach out to him. His ears at his aid, he could trace the voices coming from northwest of the campsite. With this information, he felt an immediate pressure to follow it out of some obligation.

Part of him wanted to wake Jaera. To tell her of the mirages, the voices, the ruins, and the shrouded figures, but he was all too compelled to not disturb her meditation. Yet, he had to find what it all meant, even if alone as there was no way he could rest now. He readied himself, armed for any possible danger that awaited him and without confronting Jaera at all, he wielded his glowing lantern in one hand as if it were a sword leading a charge while his other arm cradled his winged helm.

It was at the moment that the adventurer turned his back on the elf that she broke through her meditative state.

“You hear it too, Hannivar?” she asked in a simple, dull monotone.

A quick moment had him taken aback by her sudden awakening. WIth his lantern he veered his body around to see her. Her eyes remained shut, as if she had sensed his movements and his intentions with little effort. Not only that, but she had also seemingly been aware of the voices, and possibly the ruins as well. Even though he had suspected Jaera to already know the answer, Hannivar answered her anyway out of politeness.

“Yes. I’d wager I can gauge the direction and distance from here,” he explained before readying a question of his own. “Do you see it too?”

Jaera opened her eyes revealing what might as well have been a pair as emeralds, sharp as the two swords she held at her sides. Just as Hannivar suspected, she knew what her friend was talking about with those words alone and to his shock, Jaera had a surprised look on her face.

“Strange,” she began as she uncrossed her legs and rose from her comfortable position to meet Hannivar. “It’s rare enough for humans to have psychic gifts like that as it is, but a link like that is even more rare,” she said in a more enthusiastic tone.

Although he attempted to hide it with a nod, Hannivar could not help but give a surprised look of his own. He had heard of two kindred spirits both competent in the arcane and psychokinesis being bound together. History books always made it a point to explain it any chance it could get, but in all of those instances the pairing would be a result of discovering such a bond, not the other way around. He had never suspected such a thing to have been between him and Jaera.

“How can you be sure that our minds are entwined? That it’s reaching out to only us?”

She nodded back at him before gesturing around them beyond the campsite and into the wide, lush, and above all tranquil forest, seemingly undeterred by the murmurs and chants.

“If it weren’t, the animals wouldn’t be so calm. So at peace. It seems to call for us and us alone. It’s pulling us in. I felt it, and you felt it too. I sensed it.” Jaera said in a wise, almost know-it-all manner all while speaking to him as an equal, something that a faith-bound twenty-six-year-old human such as Hannivar became accustomed to.

The young man thought back to that feeling he got from the voices. That compulsion to find the source. That afterthought made him question what it could mean. There were not many places that drew people to it on an impulse, at least none that brought fortune. “What if it’s a trap?” he inquired hesitantly.

Without a word Jaera grasped Hannivar the polished helmet from under his arm and laid it upon his head before shooting him a smile. “Then we won’t be springing it alone,”--she laid both hands atop their corresponding sword pommels--”nor unarmed.”

The two adventurers then marched forward away from camp and into the wild, just as Hannivar had attempted before on his own. Every step they took in the right direction had the murmurs wax like the moon. Like before he guided the way with his lantern, one that seemed to illuminate brighter than any torch. It bore symbols resembling waves popped out with golden lining. Something gifted to him from a nomadic sage he and Jaera encountered at a port years ago.

In fact, the more he came to recall it, the more he realized that there were hardly any encounters or run-ins that they had not taken on side-by-side. The fights with goblins, the taming of savage beasts, the study of all kinds of weapons and relics all started and ended with their unspoken covenant and here began another one.

“Seven years, Hanna,” uttered the elf abruptly.

“Pardon?”

“It’s been seven years since we joined up--,” she felt up his muscled arm as it held the lantern forward. “You were skinnier then. Glad you saw to that.”

After a slight blush he realized what she meant and smiled over to her. “There’s no privacy with you, is there now?”

“Nope,” she smuggly affirmed. “Not while we’re linked.”

That only seemed to open up more questions to Hannivar. That and this apparent late-onset connection he had been told about. Regardless, the idea itself seemed to have made Jaera noticeably happier. As for him, he was unsure what to think. His heart felt like fluttering little by little with the thought of being somehow bound by fate. He sensed it in her too. Though her elven heritage made her appear more pompous and at times uninterested, it was an impossible feat for anyone to hide behind such a mask for every moment in those seven years.

He had always found her attractive--no able-minded man could find her otherwise--but he had never considered such a discovery would change how they saw each other, but perhaps it was the kind of push they never expected. He wanted to ask her about how it would change them

Before any further questions could be asked however, the ruins had come into sight and with it the whispers were now more like chants in language neither of them could fully discern or understand. They crouched down to avoid any detection before sheltering behind a wall. One in-tact enough to allow them to stand.

“You think it’s some kind of cultic ritual?” Hannivar whispered, trying to peer over the walls as best he could without getting caught.

From behind the partially destroyed walls the pair caught a better look of them. They were all veiled in cloaks of black, just as they saw in their shared dreams. From what parts they saw not obscured by the black of the cloth were nothing but bone. They circled around whilst they uttered their chants to a larger one. One in stainless white wearing a crown of lead

“I couldn’t help but think we’ve seen this before in a book,” said Jaera, now toned down to a more serious tone again. “I bet if we could make out what they were saying then we could narrow it down.”

Naturally, this answer was not the desired one for Hannivar. No matter what they were, they gave him a vibe of discomfort until her soft, elven hand rested on one of his broad shoulders. “What if they’re up to no good? We can stop them. We’ve been through far worse wouldn’t you say?”

The squinting of his eyes spoke for him. If someone wrong were to happen because of this without their interference, he would have never forgiven himself. Jaera sure knew how to trigger him into action.

“Let’s split up then,” he said with a smile.

Like that they went to opposite ends of what they could tell used to be an old temple, no doubt built to praise a dead deity these near-skeletal chanters had gathered for. The rough feeling of the stone walls had carried over exactly how he had felt them in the dream. Every groove, bump, and imperfection was identical, which only worried him as to their potential power to cast such a dream.

As he drew closer through busted holes of rock and hard stone the light of his lantern only seemed to brighten, something he tried to quell. He uttered spell after spell in as many tongues as he knew to silence the glow, but it was all in vain.

Surrounding the main circle, several more emaciated followers observed, pondering what he could only imagine was the glory of their forgotten god. They wielded swords and axes, rustic and weathered, possibly through use or even corruption. That might have explained their famished appearance. As he tried to hide the light, he watched over these things as they all looked so alike it was impossible to tell if they were men or women, or neither.

He did however feel the femine hand of one of these mummified cultists wrap around over his mouth in an act of dismantling his form. Immediately, he struck the bony torso of the cultist with his elbow, and allowed the light of his lantern to burn even brighter. It tried to take it from him only to have its hand burnt off by the all-encompassing light.

The spectral figure let out a ghastly shriek loud enough to alert the whole gathering and then some. He took out his flanged mace as if ready for a fight, only to run away after dropping the lantern like the nuisance he saw it as. As he dashed down hall after all of the ruins, he discovered it to be less of a temple and more of a maze with multiple paths, dead-ends, and no end in sight, like he had just entered a sick game of theirs.

Help me Jaera! Those were the only words his mind could muster. Again and again he thought it so that he may reach out to her, too exhausted and scared to scream. He had been hesitant of their link before, but as long as it assured his rescue, he would never dare question it. His hope drained with his stamina as he came to another dead-end, this one allowing no further paths to run down, nor any time to retrace his steps. He felt the force of six arms pin his robust frame to the wall to be met face-to-face with their leader. They unveiled their white hood to reveal a skull, melted flesh dripping from it like sweat.

“At last, one has come to save us! To bring us salvation,” they announced in a shrill, yet thundering voice. “A worthy sacrifice for The Fleshless to become whole again!” the chief would repeat these words as his hand phased through Hannivar’s armor to meet his heart, piercing the very essence of his soul.

The more these words rang through his mind from the chieftain, the more voices would join. Some fell to their knees as if thanking whatever divine might they prayed to for such a sacrifice. Hannivar, however, found himself joining their chant too in their unknown tongue as he felt his own consciousness dwindling. His mind felt weaker, his body thinner, and his soul more submissive to the might of their ritual prowess. He would have been driven to madness and devotion to The Fleshless himself if the cavalry had not arrived.

A sweeping brush of pure light vaporized a dozen or so of Fleshless. Those that were unfortunate enough to miss this quick fate scattered until they were met with Jaera’s blades which now blazed with pure light as Hannivar’s lantern hung from her belt. With the chieftain now dazed into a distraction, Jaera tossed one of her blades directly where his heart once was.

Their grasp over the young man was lost, and his power had come back to him in a swift rush used to grab the blade from out of the leader’s chest and across its neck, chopping their head clean off. This loss sprang the rest of The Fleshless to flight and left the elf and human to be at peace again with the company of themselves.

The two ran over to each other with what little strength they had left and embraced themselves like they never had before. The crashed against one of the sturdy walls and slid to the ground. Once they each returned each other their rightful possessions, Hannivar could not help himself but hug her once more.

“Looks like we’re bound together after all,” he said, tired, breathless, and relieved. Drops of sweat could be seen dripping down his face once he threw his helmet off his head and on the ground.

“Hanna, we've already been linked for years.”

“Ah yes. Seven long years,” he said with a cheeky grin before kissing his elven companion on the cheek.